ACL

NAME

acl
- Access Control Lists

DESCRIPTION

This manual page describes POSIX Access Control Lists, which are used to
define more fine-grained discretionary access rights for files and
directories.

ACL TYPES

Every object can be thought of as having associated with it an ACL that
governs the discretionary access to that object; this ACL is referred to
as an access ACL. In addition, a directory may have an associated ACL
that governs the initial access ACL for objects created within that
directory; this ACL is referred to as a default ACL.

ACL ENTRIES

An ACL consists of a set of ACL entries. An ACL entry specifies the
access permissions on the associated object for an individual user or a
group of users as a combination of read, write and search/execute
permissions.

An ACL entry contains an entry tag type, an optional entry tag
qualifier, and a set of permissions.
We use the term qualifier to denote the entry tag qualifier of an ACL entry.

The qualifier denotes the identifier of a user or a group, for entries
with tag types of ACL_USER or ACL_GROUP, respectively. Entries with tag
types other than ACL_USER or ACL_GROUP have no defined qualifiers.

The ACL_MASK entry denotes the maximum access rights that can be granted
by entries of type ACL_USER, ACL_GROUP_OBJ, or ACL_GROUP.

ACL_OTHER

The ACL_OTHER entry denotes access rights for processes
that do not match any other entry in the ACL.

When an access check is performed, the ACL_USER_OBJ and ACL_USER entries
are tested against the effective user ID. The effective group ID, as
well as all supplementary group IDs are tested against the ACL_GROUP_OBJ
and ACL_GROUP entries.

VALID ACLs A valid ACL contains exactly one entry with each of the ACL_USER_OBJ,

ACL_GROUP_OBJ, and ACL_OTHER tag types. Entries with ACL_USER and
ACL_GROUP tag types may appear zero or more times in an ACL. An ACL that
contains entries of ACL_USER or ACL_GROUP tag types must contain
exactly one entry of the ACL_MASK tag type. If an ACL contains no
entries of ACL_USER or ACL_GROUP tag types, the ACL_MASK entry is
optional.

All user ID qualifiers must be unique among all entries of
ACL_USER tag type, and all group IDs must be unique among all entries of
ACL_GROUP tag type.

The
Fn acl_get_file
function returns an ACL with zero ACL entries as the default ACL of a
directory, if the directory is not associated with a default ACL. The
Fn acl_set_file
function also accepts an ACL with zero ACL entries as a valid default ACL for
directories, denoting that the directory shall not be associated with a
default ACL. This is equivalent to using the
Fn acl_delete_def_file
function.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ACL ENTRIES AND FILE PERMISSION BITS

The permissions defined by ACLs are a superset of the permissions
specified by the file permission bits.

There is a correspondence between the file owner, group, and other
permissions and specific ACL entries: the owner permissions correspond
to the permissions of the ACL_USER_OBJ entry. If the ACL has an ACL_MASK
entry, the group permissions correspond to the permissions of the
ACL_MASK entry. Otherwise, if the ACL has no ACL_MASK entry, the group
permissions correspond to the permissions of the ACL_GROUP_OBJ entry.
The other permissions correspond to the permissions of the ACL_OTHER_OBJ
entry.

The file owner, group, and other permissions always match the
permissions of the corresponding ACL entry. Modification of the file
permission bits results in the modification of the associated ACL
entries, and modification of these ACL entries results in the
modification of the file permission bits.

OBJECT CREATION AND DEFAULT ACLs The access ACL of a file object is initialized when the object is

created with any of the
Fn creat ,
Fn mkdir ,
Fn mknod ,
Fn mkfifo ,
or
Fn open
functions. If a default ACL is associated with a directory, the
mode
parameter to the functions creating file objects and the default ACL of
the directory are used to determine the ACL of the new object:

The new object inherits the default ACL of the containing directory
as its access ACL.

The access ACL entries corresponding to the file permission bits are
modified so that they contain no permissions that are not
contained in the permissions specified by the
mode
parameter.

If no default ACL is associated with a directory, the
mode
parameter to the functions creating file objects and the file creation
mask (see
umask(2))
are used to determine the ACL of the new object:

The new object is assigned an access ACL containing entries of tag types
ACL_USER_OBJ, ACL_GROUP_OBJ, and ACL_OTHER. The permissions of these
entries are set to the permissions specified by the file creation mask.

The access ACL entries corresponding to the file permission bits are
modified so that they contain no permissions that are not
contained in the permissions specified by the
mode
parameter.

ACCESS CHECK ALGORITHM

A process may request read, write, or execute/search access to a file object
protected by an ACL. The access check algorithm determines whether access to
the object will be granted.

If the effective user ID of the process matches the user ID of the file object owner,
then

if
the ACL_USER_OBJ entry contains the requested permissions, access is granted,

else
access is denied.

else if
the effective user ID of the process matches the qualifier of any entry
of type ACL_USER,
then

if
the matching ACL_USER entry and the ACL_MASK entry contain the requested
permissions, access is granted,

else
access is denied.

else if
the effective group ID or any of the supplementary group IDs of the process
match the file group or the qualifier of any entry of type ACL_GROUP,
then

if
the ACL contains an ACL_MASK entry,
thenif
the ACL_MASK entry and any of the matching ACL_GROUP_OBJ or ACL_GROUP entries
contain
the requested permissions, access is granted,

else
access is denied.

else
(note that there can be no ACL_GROUP entries without an ACL_MASK entry)
if
the ACL_GROUP_OBJ entry contains the requested permissions,
access is granted,

else
access is denied.

else if
the ACL_OTHER entry contains the requested permissions, access is granted.

else
access is denied.

ACL TEXT FORMS

A long and a short text form for representing ACLs is defined. In both forms, ACL entries are represented as three colon separated fields: an ACL entry tag type, an ACL entry qualifier, and the discretionary access permissions. The first field contains one of the following entry tag type keywords:

A
group
ACL entry specifies the access granted to either the file group (entry tag
type ACL_GROUP_OBJ) or a specified group (entry tag type ACL_GROUP).

mask

A
mask
ACL entry specifies the maximum access which can be granted by any ACL
entry except the
user
entry for the file owner and the
other
entry (entry tag type ACL_MASK).

other

An other ACL entry specifies the access granted to any process that does
not match any
user
or
group
ACL entries (entry tag type ACL_OTHER).

The second field contains the user or group identifier of the user or
group associated with the ACL entry for entries of entry tag type ACL_USER
or ACL_GROUP, and is empty for all other entries. A user identifier can
be a user name or a user ID number in decimal form. A group identifier can
be a group name or a group ID number in decimal form.

The third field contains the discretionary access permissions. The read,
write and search/execute permissions are represented by the
rw
and
x
characters, in this order. Each of these characters is replaced by the
-
character to denote that a permission is absent in the ACL entry.
When converting from the text form to the internal representation,
permissions that are absent need not be specified.

White space is permitted at the beginning and end of each ACL entry, and
immediately before and after a field separator (the colon character).

LONG TEXT FORM

The long text form contains one ACL entry per line. In addition, a
number sign
( #
may start a comment that extends until the end of the line. If an
ACL_USER, ACL_GROUP_OBJ or ACL_GROUP ACL entry contains permissions that
are not also contained in the ACL_MASK entry, the entry is followed by a
number sign, the string "effective:", and the effective access
permissions defined by that entry. This is an example of the long text
form:

SHORT TEXT FORM

The short text form is a sequence of ACL entries separated by commas,
and is used for input. Comments are not supported. Entry tag type
keywords may either appear in their full unabbreviated form, or in their
single letter abbreviated form. The abbreviation for
user
is
u
the abbreviation for
group
is
g
the abbreviation for
mask
is
m
and the abbreviation for
other
is
o
The permissions may contain at most one each of the following characters
in any order:
rwx
These are examples of the short text form:

RATIONALE

IEEE 1003.1e draft 17 defines Access Control Lists that include entries
of tag type ACL_MASK, and defines a mapping between file permission bits
that is not constant. The standard working group defined this relatively
complex interface in order to ensure that applications that are compliant
with IEEE 1003.1 ("POSIX.1") will still function as expected on
systems with ACLs. The IEEE 1003.1e draft 17 contains the rationale for
choosing this interface in section B.23.

CHANGES TO THE FILE UTILITIES

On a system that supports ACLs, the file utilities
ls(1),
cp(1),
and
mv(1)
change their behavior in the following way:

For files that have a default ACL or an access ACL that contains more than
the three required ACL entries, the
ls(1)
utility in the long form produced by
ls -l
displays a plus sign
( +
after the permission string.

If the
-p
flag is specified, the
cp(1)
utility also preserves ACLs.
If this is not possible, a warning is produced.

The
mv(1)
utility always preserves ACLs. If this is not possible, a warning is produced.

The effect of the
chmod(1)
utility, and of the
chmod(2)
system call, on the access ACL is described in
Sx CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ACL ENTRIES AND FILE PERMISSION BITS .

STANDARDS

The IEEE 1003.1e draft 17 ("POSIX.1e") document describes several
security extensions to the IEEE 1003.1 standard. While the work on
1003.1e has been abandoned, many UNIX style systems implement parts of
POSIX.1e draft 17, or of earlier drafts.

Linux Access Control Lists implement the full set of functions and
utilities defined for Access Control Lists in POSIX.1e, and several
extensions. The implementation is fully compliant with POSIX.1e draft
17; extensions are marked as such.
The Access Control List manipulation functions are defined in
the ACL library (libacl, -lacl). The POSIX compliant interfaces are
declared in the
<sys/acl.h>
header. Linux-specific extensions to these functions are declared in the
<acl/libacl.h>
header.

POSIX 1003.1e FUNCTIONS BY AVAILABILITY

The first group of functions is supported on most systems with POSIX-like
access control lists, while the second group is supported on fewer systems.
For applications that will be ported the second group is best avoided.